1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a food material and to a food product using such a food material.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is known that obesity and lifestyle-related diseases such as diabetes and hyperlipemia can be prevented by consuming food products of starchy carbohydrate, for example, rice and wheat flour, as little as possible. A known example of food materials with less content of carbohydrate contains, as its major ingredients, gluten, psyllium husk powder, and roasted wheat bran or roasted rice bran (see JP3687049B). Other known examples are bread containing wheat flour and roasted wheat bran (see JP SH062-22540A), and bread mix containing wheat flour, wheat bran powder and granulated wheat bran (see JP3692199B).
In the food material described in JP3687049B, the wheat bran or the rice bran is roasted to mask the peculiar grainy smell. However, the fact that the food material does not contain wheat flour, brings about the insufficient body formation, which, in turn, adversely affects the appearance of food products in a case where fermentation process by yeast is involved in the making of the food products such as bread. Specifically, the dough made from the food material not containing wheat flour does not rise during fermentation, or the insufficient breaking takes place in such dough, so that the bread does not rise when baked. In addition, the texture of the bread made from the above-mentioned food material is far from the ordinary bread on the market. Moreover, the quality of the bread described in JP SH062-22540A and the quality of the bread mix described in JP3692199A are not satisfactory. Furthermore, these food materials are wheat-flour-based food materials with addition of wheat bran, so that the food products produced from such food materials contain a lot of wheat flour. As a result, restriction of carbohydrate content cannot be achieved with such food products.
The present invention was proposed in view of the above-mentioned problems. An object of the present invention is to provide a food material which contains wheat protein and at least one of fusuma bran (bran of wheat or the like) and nuka bran (bran of rice or the like), and which eliminates the poor texture peculiar to the fusuma bran, the nuka bran or a mixture of these two types of bran. Another object of the present invention is to provide a food product using such a food material.